Blog Post 1: Kevin, the Reluctant Tech Convert

My first real experience with research was in 11th-grade AP English. I had to team up with 3 other people to find what we could on Sylvia Plath...and we had to present the paper. Unfortunately, we had few of the resources available today in 1994. The school library nor the local library presented us with many options other than primary sources--and the ones available were not so helpful. I viewed research as an unfruitful pan for gold long after I was finished with Ms. Plath.

By the time I finally became serious about completing my undergrad in 2005, the research landscape had undergone a huge shift from limited print resources that were clutched stingily to the hearts of faraway universities...to the great information share of the vast caches of internet sources that sprouted in the ether. My freshman year, I was lost in unfamiliar territory. My experiences with computers were at that point fairly limited. I'm still learning, but I've worked hard to get up to speed.

I began with Wikipedia, though unlike Jamie, I tended to use it as a tertiary source in almost everything I turned in. My early profs didn't seem to mind so much--but after the widely-reported flaw in Wikipedia's review of credentials (whereby an unqualified hack altered hundreds of articles from Baywatch to heart surgery)--I stopped using it as anything other than a quick review of a given subject.

I felt like a research beginner for a long time, much like Dana , Hayley, and Michelle feel now (though I suspect a touch of extra humility, since they seemed to have a decent approach in the works;). By the time I finished my BA, however, I felt like I had a pretty good idea where to look. I made a special trip to VT's wonderful Newman Library to research a paper that ended up having legs in several different directions. The paper, "The Shared Cycle: Daoist Principles in the Appalachian Writings of James Still," helped me complete an independent study, was cropped and submitted to become a finalist at WVU's Annual Literature Symposium (the link direct to Concord's writeup of the previous year, as I could not find the article for 2010), was also extended and greatly altered for an application to VT's Philosophy MA program (a failed app, as it turned out)...and was finally reconfigured for my VT English application (thankfully a successful one).

Throughout the course of the research I've done thus far, I've familiarized myself with JSTOR, the MLA International Bibliography, Google Scholar, and a few others (many of which are mentioned in the Towheed article. I intend to continue use of these resources, but I'm also excited about the additional resources offered at VT, such as Summon and Addison.

For my upcoming research paper, I plan to start with these online resources, then move on to print. As of now, I think my subject matter will likely be William S. Burroughs (one of my favorite authors/miscreants from the Beat Generation) though the amount of material out there might end up redirecting me.